B-Greek: The Biblical Greek Forum

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Please quote the Greek text you are discussing directly in your post if it is reasonably short - do not ask people to look it up. This is not a beginner's forum, competence in Greek is assumed.

I've found out how to type polytonic Greek without a polytonic Greek keyboard, just by using a polytonic Unicode font with MSWord and the "insert character" shortcut keys.. Using "insert character" one can assign short-cuts for all the common Greek characters - I use "Alt + corresponding key", then save the shortcuts. It works better than any of the virtual keyboards I've tried, and my Beginning Greek students are now typing polytonic Greek with very few problems after just a couple of months, starting from scratch with the language. To use it with BGreek messages, I type the Greek in a seperate Word .doc, and just copy and paste it into the BGreek message box.There are a couple of doc and pdf files at http://www.drshirley.org/gr201/word-proc.htmlwhich explain the process - and there are also some links for polytonic Unicode fonts.I must confess, though, that I don't usually bother with the accents, unless it's to differentiate between liquid verb present and future, etc. - After all, the accents are a later development.Hope this helps.Shirley Rollinson

Something went wrong with you quoting above, Shirley. Multikey is an excellent resource, which enables the user to type more than just polytonic Greek, if there should ever be a need to do so, but the polytonic Greek works just fine. As for accents, sure it's a later development, but still one developed in antiquity part of the purpose of which was to help non-native speakers of Greek better learn the language. So let's not be to dismissive of them. Such an acute rejection could have grave results, but let's stay roundly flexible on the whole subject.

MAubrey wrote:And, in fact, it is irrelevant because as far as I can see in this thread nobody said the construction means "show love outwardly." That was your own creation.

Thanks. That was precisely my point, that it does not have any connotation of outward action. Your rendering of Eph 2:4 also unambiguously denotes outward action, as you used "expressed/demonstrated". This was in response to when Stephen said:

If you're proposing "to have love for" rather than "to show love for" then you should explain why BDAG got it wrong.

I interpreted him to mean "show love outwardly" because that is the only distinction between the two English phrases that he used. I proposed that it means the former and not the latter.

MAubrey wrote:

David Lim wrote:Furthermore, did you think that the other examples of repeated cognates that I brought up are all idiomatic also? If not, what makes "αγαπαν" so special? Notice that some of them are indeed used with relative clauses, with essentially no change in meaning but simply a little redundancy.

You seem to have developed this strange idea that if you cannot translate the meaning, then it must not exist...

No, it is you who have the idea that I always look at what can be translated and how it is translated. If you noticed I did indeed translate all the examples I was referring to with the "redundancies" all intact, including "the love which [he] loved us with", and by the way I don't see anything wrong with such translations, even if such expressions are not often used in English.

On typing polytonic Greek, why not just use the Polytonic Greek keyboard that is already part of Windows?Then the keyboard will be available in all the programs on the machine, and in any Windows computer that a person uses anywhere in the world.

MAubrey wrote:To the extent that the examples you've been discussing involve the addition of a definite object rather than an indefinite and non-referential entity, I would suggest that the addition of the definite NP object does roughly the same thing. It necessitates a change of state interpretation and thus Eph 2:4 must mean something like: the love which he showed/express/demonstrated to us. If the cognate accusative was indefinite and clearly non-referential (like pizza, poetry, and poem in the "a." examples above), then emphasis would be a perfectly adequate explanation. The addition of the definite article precludes such a limited interpretation.

RandallButh wrote:On typing polytonic Greek, why not just use the Polytonic Greek keyboard that is already part of Windows?Then the keyboard will be available in all the programs on the machine, and in any Windows computer that a person uses anywhere in the world.

Ditto for the Mac. Both use the Greek national keyboard layout.

Let me second this recommendation. If you're not the type to fuss with special keyboard programs, a polytonic Greek keyboard comes standard in Windows and has for a long time. (I didn't know that about the Mac, but good there too.)

MAubrey wrote:And, in fact, it is irrelevant because as far as I can see in this thread nobody said the construction means "show love outwardly." That was your own creation.

Thanks. That was precisely my point, that it does not have any connotation of outward action. Your rendering of Eph 2:4 also unambiguously denotes outward action, as you used "expressed/demonstrated". This was in response to when Stephen said:

If you're proposing "to have love for" rather than "to show love for" then you should explain why BDAG got it wrong.

I interpreted him to mean "show love outwardly" because that is the only distinction between the two English phrases that he used. I proposed that it means the former and not the latter.

I never used the word "outwardly" (until now) in this thread and neither does BDAG. There is an Aktionsart distinction, here between a state and an activity, which has been my concern the entire thread.

MAubrey wrote:And, in fact, it is irrelevant because as far as I can see in this thread nobody said the construction means "show love outwardly." That was your own creation.

Thanks. That was precisely my point, that it does not have any connotation of outward action. Your rendering of Eph 2:4 also unambiguously denotes outward action, as you used "expressed/demonstrated". This was in response to when Stephen said:

If you're proposing "to have love for" rather than "to show love for" then you should explain why BDAG got it wrong.

I interpreted him to mean "show love outwardly" because that is the only distinction between the two English phrases that he used. I proposed that it means the former and not the latter.

I never used the word "outwardly" (until now) in this thread and neither does BDAG. There is an Aktionsart distinction, here between a state and an activity, which has been my concern the entire thread.

Thanks for clarifying. But then I am sorry I can't see what is wrong with "the love which God had for us". If you think that my interpretation of the phrase (to put it in another way, "the feeling which God felt towards us") is incorrect, I would really like to hear your reasons.

Oh. Actually I used the phrase "specialized idiomatic meaning" in my earlier post. Never mind. Anyway I was saying that "ἠγάπησεν" has the same meaning regardless of whether it is used with its cognate noun or not.

RandallButh wrote:On typing polytonic Greek, why not just use the Polytonic Greek keyboard that is already part of Windows?Then the keyboard will be available in all the programs on the machine, and in any Windows computer that a person uses anywhere in the world.

Ditto for the Mac. Both use the Greek national keyboard layout.

Let me second this recommendation. If you're not the type to fuss with special keyboard programs, a polytonic Greek keyboard comes standard in Windows and has for a long time. (I didn't know that about the Mac, but good there too.)

I agree with both of you! I install the Windows Polytonic Greek keyboard on work computers all the time - and then remove it when I leave the station. It works marvelously without any need to install software on the computer - and it is portable, because I don't have to be on my own computer to use it. Everything in life is confusing until you learn it. Learning the pre-packaged keyboard is more than worth the fuss.

From what Stephen said, he seemed to suggest that "αγαπαν" (I never said "αγαπην") was idiomatic when used with its cognate noun as an object of it. Stephen, if I got you wrong, please tell me.

This is where using accents in your Greek would be useful to the rest of us. Do you mean ἀγαπᾶν (as in the present active infinitive of ἀγαπάω, the standard lexical form)? How can we know that you're not just typing the word ἀγάπην wrongly?

David Lim wrote:Thanks. That was precisely my point, that it does not have any connotation of outward action. Your rendering of Eph 2:4 also unambiguously denotes outward action, as you used "expressed/demonstrated". This was in response to when Stephen said:

If you're proposing "to have love for" rather than "to show love for" then you should explain why BDAG got it wrong.

I interpreted him to mean "show love outwardly"...

Well, that's not a great interpretation of what Stephen said.

David Lim wrote:...because that is the only distinction between the two English phrases that he used. I proposed that it means the former and not the latter.

It isn't the only distinction between the two phrases. The distinction between the two phrases is one of actionality.

David Lim wrote:

MAubrey wrote:You seem to have developed this strange idea that if you cannot translate the meaning, then it must not exist...

No, it is you who have the idea that I always look at what can be translated and how it is translated. If you noticed I did indeed translate all the examples I was referring to with the "redundancies" all intact, including "the love which [he] loved us with", and by the way I don't see anything wrong with such translations, even if such expressions are not often used in English.

I'll have to take your word for it. The fact that you did indeed translate all the "redundancies" intact suggest you're still not there. The day you stop translating entirely...that'll be the day I'm convinced. I'm impressed with your determination and tenacity as well as how much you've learned over the past year, but you haven't arrived yet. You kind of remind me of me 10 years ago.